Quote Of The Day - Here and Now Edition

March 9th, 2012

"People think I've got this job as a leader. They don't realize that I have about 200 responsibilities and roles. I've gotta be the big brother, the father, I gotta be the disciplinarian, the dean of students, the principal, the spouse—you can't believe all the roles that I have to play! But one of them is, you know, some problems you can nip early... It's just a slice of America, it really is. We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest. We got some of the best people you'd ever meet, and some of the raunchiest. We've got 'em all."

-- Speaker of the House John Boehner showing some signs of career fatigue.

Ezra Klein On Future Revenues

August 2nd, 2011

Ezra notes that there are still many options available to raise revenue... and that Speaker Boehner still doesn't seem to understand how government works:

"When Speaker John Boehner was trying to reassure his members that the debt deal wouldn’t lead to tax hikes, he fell back on an unexpectedly technical — and incorrect — argument. The deal, he said, “requires baseline to be current law, effectively making it impossible for Joint Committee to increase taxes.” That’s not just wrong. It’s wrong in a way that gets at a fundamental fact about the relationship between Boehner and the two groups who judge his work:

his members, and the Congressional Budget Office."

Ridiculous Spin

July 28th, 2011

Yes, Speaker of the House Boehner is twisting in the wind. Yes, it is because of the intransigence of the so-called Tea Party Freshmen. This is the result of two different and very distinct phenomena. First, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) is very nearly and almost disastrously incompetent. Face it. He is bad at his job. He simply can't lead from his leadership position. Second, it the latest example of a radical minority, one whose views are utterly at odds with three quarters of the population on specific policy matters, preventing the government from functioning.

Enter the delusion that now constitutes the conservative echo chamber. The Drudge headline linking to the article also linked above is as follows.

Drudge Report screenshot taken at 8:45pm CST

In the eyes of the core of what I call the "saboteur right wing," this failure to govern is not only being regarded as a positive... it is affirming their fantasy that they run the show.